Linux Kernel 4.13 Released By Linus Torvalds — Here Are The Biggest Features

Linux kernel 4.12 was released in early July, which was the second biggest release in terms of commits. It came with the support for new AMD Vega graphics support. Following Linux kernel 4.12, Linux boss Linus Torvalds has released Linux kernel 4.13 after seven release candidates.

The Linux Kernel Mailing List announcement of kernel 4.13 turned out to be a little bit personal as Torvalds had to go through “seven hours of pure agony due to a kidney stone.” He expressed relief as kernel 4.13 wasn’t delayed.

As things are now fine with Torvalds, let’s tell you about Linux kernel 4.13 features. Compared to Release Candidate 7, there are networking and driver fixes. Talking about Linux 4.13 as a whole, this release isn’t particularly as big as compared to the recent releases.

However, this release is of particular importance as it deals with a generic protocol security issue. Here, I’m talking about the default cifs behavior. “Instead of defaulting to SMB 1.0 (which you really should not use: just google for “stop using SMB1″ or similar), the default cifs mount now defaults to a rather more modern SMB 3.0,” he wrote in the release announcement.

The other notable Linux kernel 4.13 features are initial Cannonlake support, DRM sync object support, AMD Raven Ridge support, new DMA mapping subsystem, MUX subsystem merging, statx support by F2FS and Btrfs, improved hardware support, etc. For a complete set of changes, you can read this detailed coverage by Phoronix.

It goes without saying that the release of Linux kernel 4.13 has opened the kernel 4.14 merging window. It’s a big deal as 4.14 is supposed to be the next LTS kernel.